30 Hours
by clemonlime
Summary: For the first twenty-four hours after Jack goes missing, Aaron and Reid can't do anything but wait.


Reid took a deep breath through his nose, the throb of the lie detector wires coursing over the veins that were sticking out from the skin of his forearm as he looked in anger to himself at the mirror of the interrogation room that he'd used on so many people time and time again. Guilty people. People who had killed other people, who had felt their last pulse of blood in their body before they died. Reid was missing his son.

Aaron was in the other room. Reid knew they had to be questioned at the same time to avoid speculation that one or the other was involved, but he needed his husband there for comfort because his heart rate was sped up and he knew that if someone came forward and blamed him, an increased heart rate would be a cause for questionability. After the first twenty four hours, the chances of Jack turning up at their doorstep alive and breathing, blood in his cheeks and smile on his face, dropped substantially. They were in hour twenty.

"When I get my hands on..." Aaron murmured into Reid's hair, rocking his husband back and forth in the stiff waiting room chair. "… I'll make him pay."

"You'll put handcuffs on him and walk him into the BAU," Reid whispered, "You'll bring the bastard into court and give him fifty-to-life, and we'll go home with our baby in our arms and deal."

"I don't think I could do that."

"You will," Reid's voice shook as he grasped onto Aaron's tie. "Our baby grew up with both of us around. He's fighting for his life like you, and he's talking his way out like me. When we get there, the guy'll regret taking him, and the second he sees us, he'll know it's over."

Aaron just nodded and kissed his head.

The lie detector tests came back negative, as they should have. The white noise of grief was burning away into anger. Anger at themselves for letting Jack walk to the neighbor's house alone after five. Anger at the man that somehow managed to seem friendly enough to offset their son's knowledge of kidnappers and how there's never a lost dog. Anger at the police who weren't talking to analysts, and who repeatedly chanted the spiel about how nine times out of ten, kid goes missing, ends up with a parent or relative. Reid knew the statistics. Reid knew that ninety nine percent of kidnappings were acted out by people familiar to the victim; family or friends. So did Jack. Jack knew all of this, and that was why he was going to make it.

Reid was livid at the local police department. They weren't making any strides to find Jack; they were so focused on checking the lie detectors and asking the neighbors. It was no use. Reid had talked to them, already profiled every teacher at Jack's school, every pediatrician, every nurse. But if he was right, and he knew he was, their baby was in the one percent of kids-the ones abducted by strangers. And that was going to make life hell.

There wasn't much of a process for it. This wasn't a serial killer. This was most likely a man driving b that saw Jack in his school uniform and picked him up. The man wasn't the kind to touch Jack; often sexual predators stalked their victims long beforehand, but the skid marks of the tires as they sped away suggested that the man left in a panic. A sexual predator would have drove away slowly to avoid attention. Besides, Jack would have fought and fought smart.

When twenty four hours hit, it was officially a BAU case. It was so strange to see the roles of the two husbands switch; Reid's face was blank except for a few angry grimaces as he read each detail that they knew, while Aaron's mouth never seemed to close all the way, his eyebrows inclined and his eyes always misted over. Reid was the one to interrogate every person of interest while Aaron stood behind the two-sided mirror with a notepad in his hands. The team didn't know what to say, so most of their work was done in silence.

Reid was the leader. That was an interesting development When Reid was angry, there was no other emotion that could overpower it, and such led to his best work. He was the initiator and leader of the group meetings, he used the tablets in order to increase efficiency—Reid never used tablets before—and he set alarms to sleep exactly eight hours every night in order to heighten his senses. Aaron hadn't slept a wink. He hid behind Reid and let him speak, held his hand when it was necessary, made sure he wore the shirts that Jack liked, just in case that would be the day they burst through the door and their son would be there.

Twenty seven hours came and gone. The aura of worry just intensified as Reid's hand clenched around a cup of boiling coffee at the sight of Jack's face on their bulletin board. The bulletin board they reserved for the people who had already died. He knew that had to entertain the possibility, but to see Jack's school picture hanging in the same place pictures of gore and broken bones and eyes glued open had been pinned just weeks before made whatever Reid was feeling worse. He didn't even wince as the coffee burned his hand. He stormed up to the board and ripped the pictures off, insisting they move them.

At thirty hours, the sound of quick, hurried footsteps hitting tile made everyone look up from their desks. A gray-and-blue blur ran past everyone and up the steps toward the upper level of offices. Reid burst into Aaron's office and held up a printed sheet of paper, warm and still drying from the printer outside, a barrier of tears highlighting the bottom rim of his eyes as he murmured a license plate number and a last-seen address. Two miles from their house. Two miles from where Jack was before he was lifted up and taken away.

Reid drove the van. Aaron sat in the passenger seat while Morgan and JJ rode in the back. The siren was loud, he was sure, but he couldn't hear anything. He followed the blinking red dot on the satellite with all the accuracy of a doctor searching for his son—surgical. Aaron grasped onto the door handle as the swerved into the parking lot of an old hospital. The car was out front, the trunk popped open a sliver. Morgan slid the door open, his gun held out at arms length, nudging the trunk further open. No one was inside, but distinct scratch-marks on the old felt interior made him stand straight and drop the gun to his side, looking back to the car with sad eyes.

That was all Reid needed.

He opened the car door. He shot the lock off of the door and entered the building. No one followed him. Morgan stood where he was with his gun aimed at several different windows, but he knew he wouldn't have to shoot. A father with a gun was never someone that needed back up. Reid knew every possible way to shoot a man; the different arteries that would bleed more, the places that would hurt the most, the places to shoot for an immediate death. He'd practiced them to detail. But he never thought he'd have to use them like this.

Aaron sat in the car, frozen. He watched the flicker of a flashlight as Reid ascended each floor. He knew he couldn't go in there. Reid, even while livid as all hell, had mercy. Aaron didn't. He never would. He'd take the man by the collar and slam him against any wall and punch until the face in front of him didn't look much like a face anymore. But Reid... Reid would talk to him. Aaron wasn't sure what he would say, but he knew it wouldn't be anything about what he'd done. He'd maybe ask how the weather was while he handcuffed him, if he had a family, what languages he spoke. Maybe he'd cry. Reid hardly cried, but this would have been the time to.

When he appeared, he came with company. Reid came first, his long hair in his face as he ushered out a tall man with bruises on his face and arms. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, which told Aaron that it was the man who took their son. The bruises... well, those were probably from Jack. Aaron felt the feeling of a smile, but he couldn't carry it through. He watched Reid mumble under his breath to the man, almost in his ear, before passing the man's wrists to Morgan, who held him against the car that Jack had been held in. Reid disappeared back into the darkness of the building, emerging a few moments later with a boy clinging to his waist.

Aaron fumbled desperately with the door handle as Reid collapsed on the ground in front of the door, gathering Jack into his arms and burying his nose into the neck of his son. Aaron joined them there, tears falling from his eyes and soaking into the clothes that Jack had been wearing for days.

"I'm so proud of you," Reid whispered into Jack's shirt, clutching onto his back. "You gave up a hell of a fight, my baby. Oh, you made him wish he hadn't messed with you."

"I love you, Papa."

"I love you too, my love. My smart baby boy," Reid cried and looked at Aaron. "We taught him well."

Aaron just nodded vigorously as the rest of the squad cars pulled into the parking lot.


End file.
